The Church of St Philip and St James is a church in Tow Law, County Durham, England. The church was designed by architect Charles Hodgson Fowler (1840-1910) and completed in 1869. Built of sandstone, the decorated church features a south-west tower. It became a Grade II listed building on 5 June 1987.[1]
The church is administered as one of The Four Parishes - including St Mary & St Stephen Wolsingham, St Bartholomew Thornley Village and St.Cuthbert Satley.[2]
The vicar of Tow Law from 1862 to 1888 was the Revd Michael Henry Simpson. Simpson's youngest daughter, Alice Pickering (1860–1939), was a tennis player who played twice in the Wimbledon Championship Final.[3]
Another of Michael Henry Simpson's daughters, Florence Eva Simpson (1865–1923), known as Elva Lorence, became a published writer and composer, as well as a painter.[4]
A third sister, Katherine Ashton Simpson (1858–1951), known as Kate A. Pearce Simpson, was a writer of books and musicals and poetry.[5] She was also an artist, whose work was hung in the Royal Scottish Academy, at the Berwick Exhibition in Newcastle-on-Tyne.[6] Her painting of her sister, Florence Eva Simpson, is part of the collection of Touchstones Rochdale gallery, run by Rochdale Arts & Heritage Service.[7]